Fifty
by Sun Arose
Summary: Fifty drabbles using the prompts from the 50-themes community on LJ. Various characters and settings, mainly before and after the main storyline. This week: Izumi knows from the moment she agrees to take Edward and Alphonse Elric in that she is being greedy (updates weekly, hiatus so I can finish a separate story)
1. Cinnamon (Roy)

**Author's note:** I'm alive! It's good to be back :D These drabbles shall update every weekend and focus on a wide variety of characters, set mainly before and after the manga/Brotherhood storyline. Prompt list is from the community 50-themes on LiveJournal. Enjoy!

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An Ishvallan woman on the side of the road offers him a mug of coffee, and he accepts, surprised, with a _thank you_ in her own language. The rest of his party - Hawkeye, Fuery and Breda, their translator, and the small group of elders who serve as guides - stop to wait, but the woman beams up at Roy through a face full of wrinkles and says something beyond Roy's weak grasp of Ishvallan.

"She wishes for you to keep the cup," the translator explains, "and thanks you for your service."

Roy is a little shaken. On his trip through the slum, so far he has encountered glares and insults and seen countless starved, resentful faces turned away and towards him, but nothing yet like this. The woman continues to look at him, a wide smile wanting for several teeth stretched across her face, the red color of her eyes clouded with age. He can't see a single hint of anger or fear in her, and on this first of what he hopes will be many visits to Ishval, he can't afford to lose something like that. He thanks her again.

He takes a sip from the mug before they move on to the next cluster of tents. Years ago, the coffee in Ishval was gritty with dirt and bitter as the desert wind. The drink in his hands is full of cinnamon and nutmeg and something smoky he can't identify. Roy can't imagine where anyone who lives here might find spices or how they could afford them. Did the woman obtain them specially for him? Is it possible that in the midst of all this desolation and mistrust, she has gone out of her way to show him kindness where she knows he will find none? Does she believe that he might truly wish to help, as few of her culture have believed so far?

He drinks the rest of the coffee in a few swallows and hands the mug back to its owner with a bow. "It was delicious," he tells her, putting as much thanks into his voice as he can, and the woman's grin grows even wider as the translator conveys his message. The Ishvallan elders mutter among themselves, seemingly pleased. Fuery manages a smile. Roy feels hope.

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Thanks for reading! Until next week~


	2. Bittersweet (Izumi)

**Author's note:** Ugh okay this weekend is terrible. Writing this was probably the best thing I've done since last Sunday. ALSO thank you to those who have reviewed/favorited/followed :) enjoy!

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Izumi knows from the moment she agrees to take Edward and Alphonse Elric in that she is being greedy. It seems like days since she lost the child (she can't bear to think of it as _hers_), even though it has been years, which she knows, of course, very well. If some doctor thought to ask her the exact date, it would have been called to the surface of her mind in an instant. She wouldn't have been surprised if one of the Elric boys' birthdays was weeks or days later.

She agrees to one month of "trial training" without really planning what that could be. She doesn't want to seem too hasty or look like a serial killer or anything, but for some reason these people trust her and Sig instantly.

They board the train the next morning and instantly everything is different. Suddenly there are two short, golden-haired bundles of enthusiasm following them around, laughing, yelling whenever they see something unfamiliar, occasionally arguing. Izumi is relieved when they finally fall asleep and the constant stream of questions stops, and she leans forward to lay her jacket across Ed and Al.

"I thought you didn't take apprentices," Sig reminds her.

"Well," she begins, though he already knows what she's going to say, "I started thinking, if mine were alive he would have been around their age. Plus, I could see that in their eyes they were serious about wanting to learn alchemy."

It took ten years for Izumi to even try alchemy. She grew up in a town smaller than Resembool, in the western part of Amestris, where wild animals often found their way into the streets and alchemy was all but unheard of. On a trip to the nearest real city, she had bought a book on the theory of transmutation and its practical applications outside of alchemy, completely on a whim, but found herself returning the next week to buy a small alchemical textbook. It was slow learning, so slow that it took her eight more years to learn enough for a master alchemist to consider taking her on as an apprentice. And when she did, it took more weeks of travel and a month on Briggs Mountain to prove herself worthy, at which point it became evident that there was no master alchemist to teach her anyway.

She's not going to deny that all this probably made it easier to make it through the rest of her life in some way, but these boys are what, ten? Eleven? And they have just lost their mother. They don't need anything else making their lives harder right now.

Well, _almost_ anything. At the next stop, Izumi hurries off the train and finds a payphone, where she calls Mason at the shop and asks him to arrange a boat trip for three to Yock Island. She hangs up with a satisfied smirk and a pang in her chest that has nothing to do with her broken body.

If these boys are going to insist on taking up so much room in her heart, she's going to put it off for a month first.

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Writing this, I wanted to expand it into a longer story :P mayhap I will sometime in the future...

Thanks for reading! Until next week.


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